2DLeviathan Class Carrier Flyby

Stormcloud

Carrier for my own story idea the UES (united earth ship) Leviathan - its almost finished - just a few little bits here and there to go but thought i would throw it into a simple flyby scene

[video=youtube_share;JPX6xPPnwZY]

argh gave it 2d tag by mistake - and cant seem to edit it

spacefighter

looks great, can't wait to see more.

hazend

Very nice, i like it.

Stormcloud

another video from the same project of a science vessel decelerating into orbit above saturns rings [video=youtube_share;P9CHuvxDUmc]

wibble

Looking great! I guess the thrust is for braking the ship, right? Cause at the moment it looks a bit like it would fly backwards.

Stormcloud

yeah its braking into orbit and the spin is to provide gravity - trying to base everything on real world physics with some extrapolations - dont get me wrong its not realistic the radiator panels for the carriers fusion engines are woefully undersized but felt would look silly for a warship if i put panels on it the size it would realistically need - got another video of fighters in an asteroid belt working on now but gonna take a while to render that one (lots of polys in the asteroids)

Stormcloud

Knight26

That's a pretty dense asteroid field, they don't come that dense in reality, at least not for long. Also, those spins would waste a lot of reaction mass.

Stormcloud

yeah i know that in the asteroid belts if you saw 2 asteroids at once it would be a miracle but all sci fi has them nice and dense and it makes for a more interesting location

yeah spins are unnecessary but you got have a little fun while out on a boring patrol - besides if i was going to be accurate they wouldnt be moving like aircraft while in space and they wouldn't need the engines on all the time either but for the fighters i think i'm going to go with aircraft physics rather than spacecraft physics, will keep that for the capital ships.

spacefighter

nice videos. the "braking into saturn orbit" one is cool, somehow i hadn't realised that the spin was a deliberate means to provide artificial gravity until i saw your comment a little bit further down the page, if your thruster and nav systems can cope with the constant spin it saves having the extra mass and extra power requirements(though those power requirements could be quite small) needed for a spinning section. it's interesting to see a ship where the longest dimension is perpendicular to the thrust axis, they are not a common design in sci-fi even hard sci-fi, but quite realistic. as for the fighters (in saturn's ring would let you just about get away with that density of large rocks/ice balls) animation i like the modelling and i think the roll can be excused for good reason. obviously those are transatmospheric fighters so they will have high thrust allowing for fast manoeuvres and to have such a thing as a good space fighter you need a really high powered engine with huge delta-V capabilities, in such a case the act of rolling doesn't use much of the large fuel reserve the fighters will carry. the engines being active during that whole animation was a bit annoying and i would advise using spacecraft physics for their motions not aircraft physics. if you only have the main engines flare up when accelerating or performing certain types of turn that would be realistic and visually pleasing. it was clear that you hadn't synchronised the rolls(have them perfectly identical would be very unlikely unless both were fully computer controlled and networked together by radio link) but they seemed to be following very similar patterns, which was a rather nice effect.

Stormcloud

for small ship a spinning section would be a large proportion of the mass of the ship so seems more logical to just spin the whole ship around the center of mass - obviously its a smallish ship so it makes sense to put alot of the ships mass at one end closer into the center and balance it with less mass further out from center to create as big a spin as possible - this is rotating to fast to be honest but i wanted to show its rotation without needing the camera on it for 2 minutes

most ships in my universe will be zero gravity affairs with a bit of genetic engineering of the crew and centrifuges to sleep in - higher rate of rotation shouldn't matter so much if your lying down - so only long duration mission ships will provide gravity

space stations on the other hand will have rotating sections for living in but the spacedock/assembly facilities will be 0g for obvious reasons - the space dock has 5 capital ship docks which serve as refueling, repair and contruction stations, there are 2 such space stations one in orbit of earth the other at the the Jupiter L1 point, the stations can be largely self sufficient - recycling nearly everything as long as they have energy -in the inner solar system the sun can provide that energy in the outer solar system fusion reactors provide it - fuel can be mined from icy bodies in the outer solar system and excess oxygen generated when separating the hydgrogen can be used for anything from supplying visiting ships with air to fueling fighter craft

these stations also act as communication relays and command and control centers, a third station is being built but is still several years from completion

anyway first look at the station - its not finished yet but the design is getting there - i put the carrier in which is just under 600m long in for size comparison so this station is large

sorceress21

Great looking stuff! Are you modeling in Sketchup?

Also...I think its a pretty inaccurate statement to say there are no asteroid fields that dense in reality. While it may be true there are none in our star system who is to say they don't exist somewhere in the endless reaches of an infinite universe.

Stormcloud

well in a forming star system its probably quite likely they are that dense but this is supposed to be the sol system but i'm happy enough with using a little artistic license besides sol system is vast could easily be somewhere that has that density - for reference though this is supposed to be in jupiters trojan asteroid field at its L5 point- and nope i'm using lightwave 10.1 - direly want lightwave 11.6 as i dont have a instancing system in 10.1 and a scene i want to do of close up and actually in saturns rings damn near melted my computer - to be fair it was probably in the high 100's of billions of polys

spacefighter

nice station, good to see a model of a space structure clearly designed to be as light as possible (all those cables holding the rings on rather than solid beams) . good thinking on your descriptions of it though hydrogen-oxygen chemical fuel is not a good choice for your fighters, however combining it with a nuclear lightbulb motor would allow a pretty good "hybrid" rocket with the nuclear part providing high exhaust velocity and the chemical part giving good thrust.
as for high density asteroid fields they could exist but on a galactic timescale they wouldn't last long (a couple of thousand years maybe if one is lucky) as in such high concentrations they would begin to collapse into a planet or moon, if one considers a big field of asteroids at close range then you find those on the edge of the field have a gravitational force pulling them inward toward the other rocks but no significant force pulling them outward so they gradually collapse into one body. if the asteroids are very widely spaced though the gravity attracting those on the edge of the huge asteroid field is so weak it can be comparable to gravitational forces acting the other way due to planets and stars, hence maintaining a field of separate asteroids rather than producing a single ball.

Stormcloud

fighters using metalic hydrogen fuel so should get good power to volume - dont think you could have a fusion engine would need all the magnetic systems - a nuclear fission thermal rocket could potentially work but considering these things are allowed to fly in earths atmosphere perhaps not the best plan - realistically the fighters dont have the massive delta-v of the capital ships are designed to engage targets around it while its maneuvering not actually trying to go from one planet to the next

Stormcloud

station and new cruiser - cruiser is faster over short distances than the carrier but less fuel reserves - carriers actually has more firepower because they are combined carrier/battleship design - but cruisers carry similar range of weaponary in a smaller cheaper to build package

spacefighter

a nuclear lightbulb would be quite safe to fly in earth's atmosphere, if it used hydrogen as it's propellant it would not produce ANY kind of fallout or any kind of transmutation of the exhaust gasses. or you could have a hybrid system, run a plain old jet engine for atmospheric flight and then switch to nuclear in orbit/at high altitude. i worry that your chemical fuel wouldn't be able to provide enough delta V to even get the fighter into orbit, let alone do anything more once it is in orbit.
once again i like your animation, having the rings counter rotate will be a great way to prevent any problems such as the rest of the station beginning to rotate when the rings are first spun up.

Stormcloud

i based the fighter engines off reaction engines saber engine design - now it uses hydgrogen and atmoshpheric oxygen then switches to botteled oxygen to finish the job of getting to space - was huge though to fit all the hydgrogen thats why it uses metalic hydrogen (dont ask how they keep it in that state in a fighter -they jsut do ) that should significantly increase its density and while not worked out the maths i'm going to assume that would let it take off from a planet and have some time maneuvering once there - more often though would be the fighters being launched from the carriers already in space leaving them with ample delta-v for the type of job they are designed for - in the event of an actual battle in a planetary atmosphere more likely would be dealing with fighters taking off from the ground and never going exo atmospheric

nuclear thermal rockets ideally wouldn't release radioactive material into the atmosphere but with the temps in the device its inevitable that you do get contaminants into the fuel - they could be used for atmospheric flights inside say saturns atmoshphere - would give you pretty much unlimited range since could take in gases to use in the engine and be damned about contamination - also handy concidering that if you lose power your dead - fortunatly with saturn the surface(not sure you can call it surface) gravity is around 1g despite its size - jupiter much higher so doubt you could climb out of the gravity well as easily - might have to design afew more specialised fighters for gas giant use but once hit things like awacs and bombers think will switch to fusion systems

as for the station yeah that was the idea with the contra rotating sections - sadly would still induce a twist effect and would need another 2 wheels to prevent that - could possibly add them as heavy solid counter weights or jsut accept some thrusters to hold its orientation

Stormcloud

since i mentioned the awacs shall show it - had originally more of an airplane things going on but now think of it as a very limited atmospheric capabilities - fusion engines allowing for fast (relatively speaking) interplanetary transit

provides radar coverage around battlegroups - has a small anti-air ai controlled turret

spacefighter

nice shape and from what i can see in that image a pretty nice cockpit and nose arrangement.

Jenny

For SWACS (Space Warning and Control System) linger time on station would be more important than high transit speed. That's why AWACS plans are prop-driven with large wing spans, instead of jets... they have to stay in an area and watch the threats in order to create control of the airspace.

Stormcloud

while that is true these have to be able to keep up with battlegroups while moving between planets and also be able to get out to there stand off positions then get back the fleet without getting left behind - once they have arrived somewhere linger time is down to air and other consumables rather than fuel - so speed is important - and the fusion engines also give it the best endurance aswell - this will the smallest ship capable of independant interplanetary travel

Stormcloud

first look at the alien ships well ship for now - this is the fighter, better than human fighters in most respects but once in an atmosphere tables are turned

say about 50% better than human fighters in space - 50% worse in atmosphere

spacefighter

the red eye inspired by HAL perhaps, i wonder if any pod bay doors need opening? lol.

Stormcloud

well that red eye was very ominous - i'm sorry dave i'm afraid i cant do that

Stormcloud

test of the alien fighter firing its particle cannons

spacefighter

good beams, nice effect with a different colour at the core than the edges. as for 2"particle" beam weapons i would advise against them, see what atomicrockets has to say about how a charged beam has a habit of veering back to hit your now oppositely charged spaceship, if you fire out both positive and negative particles you have a neutral beam weapon and don't get this but it has a nasty habit of the particles spreading out as they travel(like trying to shoot someone with steam). i would call it a laser to be on the safe side. your glowing heat radiators beneath the alien ship are a nice touch and it's good to see another animator who uses constant beams rather than bolts.

colbmista

Do a partial beam weapon like the.defiance has in star trek

Stormcloud

first look at alien mothership

Stormcloud

Alien mothership flyby test

Stormcloud

fighter gun test - descided to go with kinetic rounds on human fighters - obviously modified for space with tracers that show in a vacume